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Silver Point Capital buys 19 per cent stake in Postmedia

The National Post says about 19 per cent of its parent company’s equity has been purchased by Silver Point Capital, an investment firm based on Greenwich, Conn.
The Canadian Press

By The Canadian Press

Fri., Nov. 1, 2013

A U.S. fund manager has acquired about 19 per cent of Postmedia Network Canada, owner of several major Canadian newspapers including the National Post.

Silver Point Capital’s purchase of 7.4 million Postmedia shares makes the Connecticut-based fund manager one of the largest shareholders of the Toronto-based newspaper publisher.

Postmedia chief financial officer Doug Lamb told the Post in an article published Friday that Silver Point had expressed an interest before making the purchase but didn’t disclose the fund’s exact plans.

An Oct. 10 filing with Canadian regulators says Silver Point acquired the securities “for investment purposes only and not with a view to influencing the control or direction of Postmedia.”

Postmedia owns most of Canwest’s former big-city newspapers, including the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald and two Vancouver dailies, the Sun and Province.

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The document doesn’t say how much Silver Point paid or who sold the block but the regulatory filing followed an usually large trade of Postmedia stock on Sept. 26, when 7.1 million shares traded hands.

The stock closed that day at $1.60, down five cents from the opening, making that transaction worth about $11.4 million. The stock traded as high as $1.95 in the days that followed and closed Thursday at $2.

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